Vinnie D’Alessandro, Umbrella Solutions Chief Product Officer, has written an article for innovAGEING – Australia’s national age services innovation network.
Led by Merlin Kong, innovAGEING is the national innovation network for the age services industry. It aims to bring together the brightest minds and ideas to help transform the aged care industry.
At Umbrella Solutions, we’ve designed Coverage to be so simple to purchase and use that we reckon you could have a live Plan for Continuous dashboard up and running in with only a few minutes of effort!
Subscribe to Coverage: Effort – 2 minutes
We’ve made it super simple to get started with Coverage and the first month is free.
Jump on our website https://umbrella.solutions/coverage grab the monthly subscription product, enter your details and credit card and you’re off. In a few seconds you’ll receive an email about your order.
Don’t worry we won’t charge your credit card until next month, and you have the freedom to cancel any time via our website. We won’t make you write a letter or talk to a high pressure call centre sales person to cancel your subscription. Just go to https://Umbrella.Solutions/my-account find your order and cancel it.
Relax while we get your environment ready: Effort – 0 minutes
Grab a cuppa while our team gets to work building your secure environment in the cloud.
It’s doesn’t take us to long, usually a couple of business hours. But at really busy times it may take longer, so if we’re flat out we’ll give you a heads up.
We’re working on automating this process so soon it will be completed in minutes, any time of the day!
Configuration information via email: Effort – 1 minutes
We’ll send you a welcome email once everything is ready, then we’ll need one last thing: the email address of the person who will be administering Coverage. Don’t worry, they don’t have to be technical – Coverage is super simple to manage.
You’ll also receive a completed order email with your invoice, which will be $0 for the first month.
Login and setup your service: Effort – 3 minutes
Shortly you’ll receive an email, click on the Complete Registration button.
You’ll be taken to our Coverage service, were you enter your details and pick a password.
Now you’re logged into Coverage!
Next you have to setup your first Residential our Home Care Service in the ‘Manage’ section.
Enter the details and select the Standards that apply to this service. If you’re not sure we’ve got some useful information in ‘Help’ section in the top menu
Now you’re ready to get going on to the Aged Care Quality Standards!
Create your first responses to the Aged Care Quality Standards: Effort – 4 minutes
Let’s enter our first responses. We’re not entering sample data here, this is real Evidence and Area for Improvement items that enhance your compliance with the Quality Standards!
Select your ‘Service’ at the top menu
Select number 8 for Standards 8 – Organisational Governance on the left menu
Select ‘Requirements 3c’ and then click the ‘+ Add new item button’ and select the ‘Area for Improvement’ item
Enter the details for the implementation of Coverage and then click save.
You’ve first completed Plan for Continuous Improvement action!
Now let’s create a piece of Evidence for Coverage to describe the system and value to the business. Click the ‘+ Add new item button’ and select the ‘Evidence’ item.
Enter the details and click save.
Finally, let’s create an active action for rolling out Coverage to your other team members. Click the ‘+ Add new item button’ and select ‘Area for Improvement’.
Looking good, you’ve already completed two responses to Standard 8!
Check out the PCI dashboard: Effort – 1 minute
Click on ‘PCI’ on the left menu to see your Plan for Continuous improvement.
There’s your live PCI action. But what about the completed one? Just Click the ‘Include Completed’ filter and it will appear.
Spread the word! Effort – 1 minute
Let’s get started on the roll out and add more people to Coverage. Go to ‘Manage’ and select the ‘User’ tabs and press the ‘Add User’ button.
Add their email, select a role and make sure you pick at least one Service
10 minutes and you’ve got your Aged Care Quality Standards moving
There you have it, your first use of Coverage with real world responses. And it’s all done with just 10 minutes of effort.
So what’s holding you back? Take control of the Quality Standards with Umbrella Coverage today.
Click here to get Coverage up and running or get in touch with us at hello@umbrella.solutions for more information.
When it comes to the self-assessment process for the new Aged Care Quality Standards, it’s a relatively consistent process to other compliance exercises.
understand requirements
formulate responses
self-rate each requirement
provide evidence and information to support the rating
Sure, there’s a lot of effort to collate the evidence and information but most organisations have it … somewhere. So, whether you’re using spreadsheets or Coverage to manage your self-assessment and audit responses, it’s just a matter of time and effort to get your assessment completed. But, and we might be a little biased here, Coverage does make it much easier 😊
So why is the Plan for Continuous Improvement causing headaches for providers?
At Umbrella Solutions, we spent a lot of time researching the new Standards reporting expectations and we understand why it’s difficult and also how to make it easier to manage.
As the name suggests, Plan for Continuous improvement (PCI) is meant to highlight the efforts and actions of providers to enhance the quality of their services. On the surface it seems quite aligned to the evidence required by the Standards.
However there’s a subtle difference; evidence is static, continuous improvements are alive.
If you have a resident service policy, you’re well on the way to meeting the Requirements of Standard 1. Grab the document. Attach it as evidence. Done.
But how do you show you’re improving your service offering? And better still; how do you track it?
You need some key pieces of information to track PCI activities
What you’re improving
Who’s responsible for it
When is it due
What’s the outcome
Some initiatives are large enough to be run as a project, so you can probably track that in a project management tool.
But what about the smaller operational tasks that your staff are working on like training, policy and procedure updates, preventative maintenance and process improvements? There may be 20, 30 or even hundreds of improvements aged care providers are making over a year.
The Government and assessors want to see all the things you’re working on now and since the last assessment. You need one place to see it together and to bring it to life.
We’ve got you covered
Coverage provides a unified location for all your responses to the Standards as well as Plans for Continuous improvement. With our prebuilt, live dashboard and reporting we give you visibility over your PCI activities
The Government has a separate PCI reporting template for providers to fill in. However, we believe you’re better off to keep all your responses and actions for the Standards in one place so you cut down on data entry.
In Coverage, PCI activities are recorded as Area for Improvement records against each Standard and Requirement. We also have a simple copy feature that allows you to duplicate an Area for Improvement to multiple Standards and Requirements in just a few clicks. You can even copy them across multiple residential or home care services!
To give you a full view of your activities, we have a live PCI dashboard and mini dashboards on the Overview pages.
We also have built in email notifications so staff receive an email when an Area for Improvement is assigned to them. They’ll also receive a reminder 2 days before the response is due and on the day that it’s due.
Oh, and let’s not forget you can export a PCI report anytime you want. And PCI activities are even included in the Self-Assessment and Audit reports.
We can get you up and running in Coverage with no technology support required.
So take control and bring your Plan for Continuous Improvement to life with Coverage.
